Along with the rapid digitalization of vehicle parts, the number and variety of electronic devices installed within a vehicle have been increasing significantly. Electronic devices may currently be used throughout the vehicle, such as in a power train control system, a body control system, a chassis control system, a vehicle network, a multimedia system, and the like. The power train control system may include an engine control system, an automatic transmission control system, or the like. The body control system may include a body electronic equipment control system, a convenience apparatus control system, a lamp control system, or the like. The chassis control system may include a steering apparatus control system, a brake control system, a suspension control system, or the like. The vehicle network may include a controller area network (CAN), a FlexRay-based network, a media oriented system transport (MOST)-based network, or the like. The multimedia system may include a navigation apparatus system, a telematics system, an infotainment system, or the like.
Such systems and electronic devices constituting each of the systems are connected via the vehicle network, which supports functions of the electronic devices. For instance, the CAN may support a transmission rate of up to 1 Mbps and may support automatic retransmission of colliding messages, error detection based on a cycle redundancy interface (CRC), or the like. The FlexRay-based network may support a transmission rate of up to 10 Mbps and may support simultaneous transmission of data through two channels, synchronous data transmission, or the like. The MOST-based network is a communication network for high-quality multimedia, which may support a transmission rate of up to 150 Mbps. The telematics system, the infotainment system, as well as enhanced safety systems of a vehicle require higher transmission rates and system expandability. However, the CAN, FlexRay-based network, or the like may not sufficiently support such requirements. The MOST-based network may support a higher transmission rate than the CAN and the FlexRay-based network. However, costs increase to apply the MOST-based network to all vehicle networks. Due to these limitations, an Ethernet-based network may be considered as a vehicle network. The Ethernet-based network may support bi-directional communication through one pair of windings and may support a transmission rate of up to 10 Gbps.
The Ethernet-based vehicle network may include a plurality of communication nodes. The communication node may be a gateway, a switch (or, bridge), an end node, or the like. An operation mode of the communication node may be classified into a normal mode and a low-power (or, sleep) mode. Further, the normal mode may be classified into an active mode and a passive mode. The active mode is an operation mode in which the communication mode operates by itself, and the passive mode is an operation mode in which the communication node operates according to requests of other communication nodes. The low-power mode is an operation mode in which the communication node operates with minimum power consumption or may be in a power off state.
In a case that the communication node supports a network management protocol (NMP), the communication node may change its operation mode in response to a network management (NM) frame. For example, the communication node may receive a NM frame from other communication nodes, and determine its operation mode based on information included in the received NM frame. In case that the information included in the NM frame indicates a normal mode based operation, the operation mode of the communication node may be set to the normal mode. In case that the information included in the NM frame indicates a low-power mode based operation, the operation mode of the communication node may be set to the low-power mode.
However, since the information included in the NM frame can be interpreted by a layer 3 or above (e.g., an application layer), the communication node should support a layer 3 or above in order to support operation mode transitions based on the NM frame.